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Topic: Gruyere and Beaufort unique taste (Read 3359 times)

These are 2 of my most favorite cheese and iwant to make them at home. From the recipes i sawthere is nothing that can create the unique tasteof those cheese. I understand that the alps milk haswhat is need to make this unique taste.Is there any ingredients that i can addto my milk that will give the final cheese this taste ?

Best advice I think for long aged cheese flavor is to use a good raw milk and use the appropriate cultures. Bear in mind also that when using raw milk you normally want to use less culture than called for by a recipe that is for homogenized/pasteurized milk.

I have done some reading and understand that the Proprionic Shermaniiis the reason for the aroma and flavor and eyes of those cheese.I now that the Shermanii need some high temperature to makeits job but what can i do if i want to get the aroma and flavorwithout the eyes like in the Beaufort cheese ?

no! no ps in gruyere. a true alpine gruyere has no ps added, and does not have its flavorthe flavor of gruyere is a combination of cooking methods, and a few common bacteriathe herbal tones of alpine cheeses are just overtones, and not the primary flavor. i would worry about this only after you have mastered the cheese itself, and then you can experiment with herb infusions and suchwe attain this by controlling the deiet of our cows.

Interesting, I've just purchased some PS which is listed as a "non-gas" producing PS for Gruyere (here's the description "Culture 5 - Propionic culture without gas production for pressed cheese. Gives the typical taste of i.e. Gruyere, for up to 500 litres". They also sell a PS that is gas producing for eye production.

- Jeff

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The wise do not always start out on the right path, but they do know when to change course.

Gruyere will typically have no holes, and occasionally very small holes. I don't think these are generally ps holes either, as the assosciated taste would be a flaw and make the cheese unmarketable.

Among Swiss Alp cheeses, Emmentaler is an exception. Most go to great lengths to avoid the growth of ps, but the cheesemakers in the Emmental instead developed a process (a difficult one) to encourage it. I suspect this is due to a few factors. Climate: The natural climate of the Emmental during the summer is conducive to ps growth. It is far warmer in these lower elevations than it will get up in the mountains.Flora: There would seem to be a strong form of wild ps present in the region. Many varieties of cheeses here have holes, but once you go out of the region the holes vanish almost completely.

My thoughts for a long time have been that Emmentaler must have developed from the Alpkäse of the Berner Oberland. The procedure for making them is almost identical (with the sole difference being that Emmentaler being geared toward ps growth, and Alpkäse geared toward ps prevention, which translates into a higher acidification for the Alpkäse by means of stronger culture development). The strongest evidence for this is that the settlement of the Emmental was very late -like 10th through 12th century AD, and that the primary source of settlement for the southern Emme valley -where the cheese originates- was the Bernese Alps. The culture of the Emmental is very closely linked to the Berner Oberland, much more so than the longer-inhabited Aar valley to the immediate west and north.

Emmentaler also has the exception of being the only traditional 'Alpine' cheese that is not made in the Alps, rather it is made in the lowlands to the north of the Alps (which is why it developed into huge 100 kg wheels). The other Alpine cheeses (Alpkäse, Appenzeller, Gruyere, Sbrinz, Bratchäs, Raclette, and a few hundred more) are all made as part of the transhumance cycle. Emmentaler is no longer connected to this cycle.

So with this, we need to realize that we cannot view Emmentaler as a model or typical example of the Alpine cheeses. A more typical cheese like Gruyere is a totally different animal, developed in a high-altitude mountain climate with the absence of modern conveniences such as refrigeration. The flavor of Gruyere is very very typical of the Swiss alpine family, but Emmentaler is odd and many Swiss actually do not like it. But it has the largest export market by far, in no small part due to the fact that it was the cheese carried by the single most influential group of Swiss emigrants -Amish and Mennonites who were banished from the Emmental and carried this cheese with them to France, Germany, Holland, Russia, and ultimately America. (Guess where decedents of this cheese are made today?)

I'm sure some folks make gruyere without PAB, but it is normally nowadays made with the addition of PAB, which is also responsible for the small holes in the paste. IMHO, slight propionic fermentation is important for gruyere flavor.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

Wild PS is obviously found throughout the Alps and contributes to the flavor of many alpine cheeses, so I use a small quantity of PS in my Gruyere and Beauforts. I age my Gruyeres normally for 2 weeks at 50F, vac bag, then move them to 68F for just 10 days. That is long enough to develop some of the propionic flavor without the swelling or eyes of a true Swiss. Then back into the cave for long term aging. I do just a 3 day warm phase for my Beauforts. For my Emmentaler (Swiss) I use 4 times as much PS and do a warm phase of 3 weeks.

but yes, I believe wild PS is prominent in at least some regions of America.

going back to the idea of Emmentaler as a general exception to the rule of Swiss Alpine cheeses, particular those in German-speaking regions, trying to avoid the wild ps, we need to look at the situation in America.

What we call 'Swiss Cheese' in America is in fact a derivative from the Emmentaler cheese. The history of this cheese is tied largely to the spread again of the Amish and Mennonite farmers through the midwest. They brought this cheese with them from Europe, and developed it to better suit this land by making some very slight changes. Most of the changes from Swiss Emmentaler to the Mennonite version ahve to do with the dairying process and not the actual production of the cheese itself.

I know a little bit about this Mennonite cheese history as I myself am Mennonite of Berner Oberland stock. (There are but 2 places on earth where my family name is common)

We have a situation in America where the Swiss Anabaptists were from 2 different groups -the Amish which came mostly from the mountains and the Mennonites which came from the Emmental. Many of the Amish come from families that were a part of the cheesemaking tradition, but the Oberland cheeses did not survive in America. Why?

3 reasons:

1: The Amish first moved to the Jura region and to Alsace, where Emmental Mennonites had previously settled, there they adopted the Emmental practices2: Those Amish that did come directly to America from the Alps found a much much different climate not particularly suited to their traditions of cheesemaking traditions, but well suited to the practices of the Emmental.3: Cheeses made in this new country readily developed a strong strain of ps due largely to environment.

The biggest evidence I have off hand of a strong wild ps is that all of this occurred in north America during the late 1700s, when the technology required to isolate a strain of ps and preserve it would have been unavailable, and even it it were available the people who developed the American version of 'Swiss' cheese would have been opposed to its use.

The biggest change to our 'Swiss' cheese occurred around the turn of the 20th century when the process became scientific and modernized. The results of this process (isolated cultures, stainless steel vats, etc.) is that the cheese became even more distant from its original form. Today, 'Swiss Cheese' and true Swiss Emmentaler are very different cheeses.

Emmentaler cheese is one of the few cheeses I know of in the Swiss tradition that actually make use of powdered cultures. Most AOC's prohibit the use of anything other than a whey culture. It is forbidden to ever add a culture powder to the milk. Even Emmentaler regulations specify the use of a whey starter, but further specify that some form of PS culture is also added -but never in powder form.

I believe the new regulation for gruyere do allow for laboratory cultures. But new gruyere is much much different from the old gruyere. It has been very modernized and mechanized. There is a cheese L'Etivaz that is a true Gruyere, closer to what the Guyere is that the American version is based on. This cheese is said to be what Gruyere was 100 years ago.

The difference between the two is this:L'Etivaz can have no manufactured cultures, but must use only the whey cultureL'Etivas very rarely has any holes. L'Etivaz is produced only by hand, with no mechanical processes allowed to be done to the milk (even the use of pumps is forbidden, as with most Alp-AOC's)

The use of ps in Gruyere cheese is a modern development, and one of the reasons why a group of farmers withdrew from the program to create L'Etivaz.